Photo: Iowa Department of Natural Resources

Jefferson bar owner fined for poaching 200” trophy buck

By JARED STRONG
j.strong@carrollspaper.com

The owner of Doc’s Stadium Bar and Grill will pay an $8,000 fine, lose his privilege to hunt for a year and forfeit a shotgun and one of the largest bucks ever shot in the state because he poached the deer, court records show.

Brett Daryl Cranston, 41, of Jefferson, shot the deer — with a rack that measured a total of about 205 inches — in December in a cornfield about 2 1/2 miles southeast of Cooper. He was licensed to hunt during that shotgun season, but he did so on three separate properties where he did not have permission to be.

Cranston first shot at the deer about six miles south of Jefferson and then chased it for about nine miles as he drove on county roads before killing it, according to the state Department of Natural Resources.

It’s unclear who reported the illegal hunting.

Two days later, two DNR officers confronted Cranston about the allegations at his house in Jefferson. It’s unclear from court records what Cranston admitted to, but his attorney later asked a judge to suppress the statements and argued they can’t be used as evidence against him because the officers violated Cranston’s right against self-incrimination because they interrogated him after he said: “I need a lawyer for this.”

The officers accused him of three trespassing crimes and a bevy of hunting violations.

A judge did not rule on his attorney’s suppression request because Cranston pleaded guilty to one of the trespassing charges last week and two of the hunting violations.

He forfeited the deer to the state along with the Remington 870 shotgun with a scope that he used to shoot it, court records show.

A Grand Junction man, Jeremiah John Pedersen, 42, aided Cranston’s illegal hunt and pleaded guilty for trespassing and not having a hunting license. He was fined $416.

The buck’s rack size is far from being a record-breaker in Iowa, but it would have allowed Cranston to join the so-called “200-inch club,” a size threshold that is coveted by big buck hunters.

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